Author: Jay Kristoff
Published: 29 May 2018
Series: Lifelike #1
Rating: 5 stars
Synopsis:
On a floating junkyard beneath a radiation sky, a deadly secret lies buried in the scrap.
Eve isn’t looking for secrets—she’s too busy looking over her shoulder. The robot gladiator she’s just spent six months building has been reduced to a smoking wreck, and the only thing keeping her Grandpa from the grave was the fistful of credits she just lost to the bookies. To top it off, she’s discovered she can destroy electronics with the power of her mind, and the puritanical Brotherhood are building a coffin her size. If she’s ever had a worse day, Eve can’t remember it.
But when Eve discovers the ruins of an android boy named Ezekiel in the scrap pile she calls home, her entire world comes crashing down. With her best friend Lemon Fresh and her robotic conscience, Cricket, in tow, she and Ezekiel will trek across deserts of irradiated glass, infiltrate towering megacities and scour the graveyard of humanity’s greatest folly to save the ones Eve loves, and learn the dark secrets of her past.
Even if those secrets were better off staying buried.
"Hey, you. Yes, you. Put this grimy, beautiful, devastating, hilarious, screaming, writhing, all-out post-apocalyptic girl-buddy-road-warrior-lost-princess-techno-thriller in your face and read it right now. It is every kind of badass." - Laini Taylor (blurb from the back cover of the book)
Oh. My. Goodness. Laini Taylor's quote about this basically sums up how I'm feeling right about now. I really don't want to wait until May 2019 for the next book in the trilogy, that's how good it is. The picture also doesn't show it but the coppery colour on the edges of the front and back cover are metallic and shiny and oh-so-cool!
I like that we see action within the first chapter so it doesn't take too long to get into it.
There were so many awesome points to this book.
It's easier to base something from something else than it is to create something from nothing, so the lifelikes were modeled off the Monrova family. Grace from Eve's mother Alexis, Gabriel from her father Nicholas, Raphael from the eldest sister Olivia, Hope from the second youngest sister Marie, and Faith from Eve herself.
I liked that the twelve lifelikes were named after angels and virtues. Gabriel, Ezekiel, Uriel, Raphael, Michael, Daniel, Hope, Faith, Patience, Verity, Grace, and Mercy. It was also good that they had the same emotional capacity as an adult, but without the knowledge or experience of how to deal with them.
There is insta-love in this book, but it's not your usual kind. This is the kind that rips out your heart and stomps on it until it is nothing but mush. The kind that shows you what horror and pain it can cause to people and their emotions. The kind that shows you that love and lust are two completely different things.
It was good to see that when restarting Myriad, four things were needed (voice ident, retinal scan, blood sample, brainwave imprint) and it took at least twenty minutes too boot up - not simply an instant restart and away you go...
The flashbacks were interesting to watch unfold. Also the layout of the pages towards the end where a character's mind spirals a bit was really nice to see. It reminded me a bit of the layout of the Illuminae Files trilogy.
The language was a bit to take in a first, but I managed to wade my way through it. Some of the language I had to figure out, like 'sprogs' and 'fugazi'. And some was pretty self explanatory, like 'bestest', 'brainmeats', 'fizzy' and 'recyc'.
One theory that I had was that the area was called Dregs because it's what remains once everything good has left, such as humanity. Kind of like how the few tea leaves and the little half-sip of tea at the bottom of the mug are called dregs.
There was only one point when I was confused about what was happening, but it's sort of self explanatory as to why that was when you get up to that part in the book. It also made my mind spin out of control with theories...
Definitely recommend this book! Also, I need the next book ASAP please, Mr Kristoff!
Stronger together, together forever.
Spoilers!
When I'd only hit page 84, I already had to try not to cry because of poor Kaiser.
Why did I cry overall? Kaiser went boom, Cricket was crushed, Silas and Ana were shot. Enough said.
Now for the part where I got confused. How was it Ana's voice and retinal scan, but not her blood? Was there a complete blood transfusion? Was it because the blood sample may have been a mix of blood and saliva? Or was it possible that Nicholas used Lemon's blood, but still Ana's eye scan and voice? And here's my craziest theory yet. One that's probably so far off the planet that it's created it's own gravitational pull: Is Lemon the Monrova's true daughter, but was given up so that she would be saved?
Finding out that Eve was a lifelike was so shocking that I actually had to put the book down and yell and swear at nothing in particular while in my car, waiting for my own 'bestest' to finish work. Plus finding out that Lemon Fresh was the one with the electrical crushing power was another big shock.
End Spoilers!
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All books in this series:
1 | LIFEL1K3
2 | DEV1AT3
3 | TRUEL1F3
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